New YorkHedieh Javanshir Ilchi

Ethereal Transgressions

March 26 – April 11, 2015

Press Release

Shirin Gallery NY is pleased to announce the exhibition, Ethereal Transgressions, featuring the paintings of Washington, DC based and Iranian-born artist Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi. Ilchi explores the notion of “duality,” as a reference to her Iranian-American cultural identity. Her paintings fuse the visual vocabularies of both Western abstraction and Persian Art, with an emphasis on the ornamentations of “Tazhib,” or the art of illumination. The amalgamation of the two artistic traditions function as a metaphor for the complexities of cross-cultural experiences. Ilchi’s work contemplates the ways paint can manifest what it means to move beyond boundaries, whether on a painting’s surface, through space, or across the world.

In her process, Ilchi manipulates the material quality of paint to construct environments that simulate terrestrial and celestial settings. Ilchi describes the surface of her paintings as shifts into “land, earth, and molten matter as it flows, coagulates, and fissures.” These vistas are familiar yet elusive and strange in their structure. The viewer can observe hints of the cosmos, abstracted aerial views, or satellites coursing through an unknown space. These paintings embody contradictory impulses when gesture and control come together to form a space that is simultaneously flattened and expansive. Here, active drips and folds of paint merge with the meticulously rendered patterns to create a paradoxical sense of depth and boundary. Ilchi’s paintings allude to concepts of “intrusion and invasion” in a personal, historical, and contemporary sociopolitical context.

Hedieh Ilchi was born in Tehran, Iran and is currently living and working in the Washington, DC area. Ilchi received her MFA in Studio Art from the American University in 2011, and her BFA with honors from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 2006. She has received many awards including the Bethesda Painting Award, Robyn Rafferty Mathias International Research Mellon Grant from the American University and the Sons of the Revolution in the District of Columbia American Art Essay Prize. Ilchi has participated in numerous exhibitions in New York, as well as Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Birmingham, AL, among others. Her work has been reviewed in a number of publications including the Washington Post and Art Papers magazine. Ilchi is currently an artist in residence at the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA.